MARCUS: How not to talk to women

When it comes to dealing with women, there is a surprising parallel between bumbling Republicans and bumbling media. Republicans have a hard time talking about women and sexuality. The media have difficulty talking about women and power.

"Some of our members just aren't as sensitive as they ought to be" in talking about women and running against female candidates, House Speaker John Boehner said in December. This is the epitome of understatement from the party that has to deal with candidates who spout idiocies about "legitimate rape."

Now to prove Boehner's point comes former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee. In remarks intended to woo women and rebut the Democrats' accusations of a Republican war on women, Huckabee instead managed to insult a whole heap of them when he criticized the Affordable Care Act requirement that contraceptives be included among no-cost preventive services.

The Democrats' message to women, he said, is that "they are helpless without Uncle Sugar coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government."

Huckabee's language helps explain the outsized GOP reaction to the contraceptive mandate, even outside the context of how it is applied to religious organizations. Why, of all the provisions of Obamacare, does this requirement drive conservatives so crazy? Underlying their discomfort, I think, is the sense that good girls don't need birth control because good girls don't have sex, or libidos that need controlling. Good girls don't get raped, or pregnant.

But if Republicans are having a hard time figuring out how to talk about, and to, women, we in the media have our own difficulties.

Recently Hillary Clinton has been on two major magazine covers, and no doubt there are dozens more to come. Time magazine showed a pant-suited leg and shoe, with a tiny man dangling from the heel, accompanied by the ominous question, "Can Anyone Stop Hillary? How to scare off your rivals without actually running (yet)." The New York Times Magazine depicted a moon-faced, wrinkled Clinton looming over the headline "Planet Hillary."

Both covers were criticized as sexist and offensive - Time's, because it played into the stereotype of powerful woman-as-dominatrix, The Times' because it made Clinton look so bloated and unattractive.

The controversy over the illustrations underscores the degree to which the media and society have not yet sorted out the proper language for talking about powerful, prominent women.

Where Time made Clinton appear ominous, The New York Times made her look, to put it bluntly, fat and old. Female politicians can't be exempt from caricature. Yet editors tread on dangerous ground when they emphasize, even unintentionally, a woman's age or weight.

Someday, these nuances of language and image will not be so fraught with undertones of sexism. For now, it behooves politicians and journalists to be more careful with the words we use and the images we concoct.

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MARCUS: How not to talk to women

When it comes to dealing with women, there is a surprising parallel between bumbling Republicans and bumbling media. Republicans have a hard time talking about women and sexuality. The media have

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